BC Celebrates Canada's Best

2008 Finalists Announced for Canada's Largest Non-Fiction Award

Award presentation: February 7, 2008

What's New

February 6, 2008 -
Read advance feature coverage of this year's award program in the Globe and Mail and Vancouver Sun.

Listen to interviews with the 2008 finalists: Donald Harman Akenson (mp3, 3.6M), Lorna Goodison (mp3, 2.9M), and Jacques Poitras (mp3, 3.4M), as originally broadcast on CBC's Almanac during the week of February 4.

Listen to the CBC's North by Northwest on February 9 for a feature interview with the winning author.

The 2008 shortlist for Canada's largest literary non-fiction prize, the BC Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, was announced November 22 by British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell. In the running for the $40,000 prize are Donald Harman Akenson, Lorna Goodison, and Jacques Poitras.

The shortlist was chosen by a distinguished jury comprising David Mitchell (jury chair), a well-known political commentator and historian; Patrick Lane, one of Canada's finest poets; and Sandra Martin, award-winning senior features writer for the Globe and Mail.

The BC Award for Canadian Non-Fiction celebrates the finest Canadian writers of literary non-fiction. It is the only national book prize to originate in BC, and the non-fiction counterpart to other major awards such as the Giller Prize for fiction and the Griffin Poetry Prize. The winner of the fourth annual award will be announced at a special ceremony in Vancouver on February 7, 2008.

Previous award recipients include Patrick Lane for There Is a Season (2005), Rebecca Godfrey for Under the Bridge (2006), and Noah Richler for This Is My Country, What's Yours? (2007).

Please click on the book covers above to read the jury citations for each finalist.

For further information, please contact:
British Columbia Achievement Foundation
w. www.bcachievement.com
e. info@bcachievement.com
t. 604-261-9777

2008 Award Winner

Photos from the 2008 presentation ceremony

2008 Award Finalists

Donald Harman Akenson

Lorna Goodison

Jacques Poitras

2008 presentation ceremony videos

2008 presentation ceremony introductions

Donald Harman Akenson

Award information page